When a terrestrial radio station plays a song, there can easily be thousands or even millions of people listening simultaneously. There is a royalty rate associated with radio airplay. Streaming audio is counted as a single listener, and the royalty is a tiny fraction of the radio royalty.

"Don't come in with some crap about "tech companies ARE screwing artists". State your case."

Let me rephrase that to be more precise - tech companies are taking advantage of artists, by exploiting their work and not paying them for it, or paying them peanuts.

The fault does not lie solely with the tech companies. It also lies with the major labels, and with the copyright and royalty laws that served a bygone era, and have not been rethought to address modern technology.

But I stand by statements, and I think I know more about this subject than you do. Terrestrial radio pays a very different royalty rate than on-demand streaming services, because of the differences in how they work.

The fact of the matter here is that companies like Spotify, Pandora, et al. are generating revenue from basically giving away other people's intellectual property. If they paid the artists more, they would go out of business. And many of these companies are not even profitable as it is.

Listeners are getting free or nearly free music, the companies are selling merchandise that they barely pay anything for, and the actual producers get nothing. It's not a good system.

It is true that the technicalities of the royalties are complicated. These services are like radio, but at the same time, not like radio. And if the major labels go away, which they are slowly doing, there will be more room for independent artists to get noticed and hopefully make a living, keeping a larger cut of their royalties.

But the bottom line is that as things stand now, tech companies ARE screwing artists, as much as the labels ever have. I believe the ultimate reality is that users need to pay more than they're currently paying for these services. $3.99 a month for ad-free Pandora, or $0 for ad-supported Pandora, is ridiculously low. They need to charge more, and the artists need to get a bigger cut.